Dispatch Procs as Assassination

I posted this over on the US forums, but I wanted to see what anyone else in the beta thought about this, or if I'm just being crazy:

Because the live rotation for assassination is pretty fluid, and we've received essentially no mechanics changes, the fundamentals of the rotation in MoP Beta is pretty fluid as well.

However, Dispatch procs can be frustrating at times: If you're pooling up for Mutilate and get lucky with a Venomous Wounds proc right at the end, you're granted a little breathing room; the 10 energy from that plus the regen during the gcd is essentially right on the cost of dispatch and you can flow smoothly into using that proc and moving back into pooling for your next move.

When you don't get the VW proc, or get it earlier when you're pooling for Mutilate (say at 30 energy, so it's still too early for another tick of Rupture when you use Mutilate), you wind up with a Dispatch proc at 0 energy. This interrupts the flow of the rotation, it feels like riding a bicycle and wanting to step on the pedal hard to get some speed, and having your bike chain fall off at that moment.

It seems like there would be some possible options to alleviate this, either make VW proc 100% of the time, or make Dispatch procs free. I like the latter better, imagine how the fury warrior rotation would feel if Bloodsurge made Slam instant, but cost rage. It just wouldn't feel right.

tl;dr: Dispatch procs off of Mutilate should be free, it makes the rotation more fluid.

PS: Another thing that would be fun is if you brought back Overkill and Cold Blood. Turn Cold Blood into a real dps CD by tying the Overkill regen solely into Cold Blood activation. The ability would become something like this: Cold Blood: 2 min CD, When activated, you regenerate 30% additional energy for 20 seconds and increases the critical strike chance of your next non-periodic offensive ability by 100%.

Originally Posted by Lightfist

The truth of the matter is, you have no proof for this and are just generating facts.

I'd have to agree; A spec, energy starved like Assa is, shouldn't have another energy dump shoved down its throat. Energy is already a valuable resource and wasting it on a proc, thus hindering the continuation of the rotation would simply ruin the "flow".

As for Cold Blood, I didn't like it in it's previous condition. It was VERY meh for a dps cooldown. Your take on it is a lot better I'd say. Surely, there must be some form of compensation for the losses though. Assa has lost 2 of its 3 dps cooldowns. How is this accounted for? We get a new class-cooldown but is that one alone enough to get Assa on the other two specs level?

I've been worried about Dispatch procs since the moment they announced it. I just can't imagine how clunky it will feel if we are trying to pool energy for a 5 combo point Envenom + 2 Mutilates and Dispatch procs in the middle of it. Not to mention Dispatch before used to be less damage per energy compared to Mutilate, although I guess they fixed that in the last patch. Energy is too valuable for Assassination. Losing a handful of energy at random every once in a while is going to feel incredibly clunky.

Strongly disagree with the Cold Blood and Overkill argument though. Cold Blood was a crap ability and I'm happy they removed it. Overkill was great at the start of a fight to get all my buffs and debuffs going but I always hated not being able to Vanish when things went wrong.

Strongly disagree with the Cold Blood and Overkill argument though. Cold Blood was a crap ability and I'm happy they removed it. Overkill was great at the start of a fight to get all my buffs and debuffs going but I always hated not being able to Vanish when things went wrong.

My point from that regard was to divorce Overkill from stealth completely, and bake its effect into Cold Blood. That way makes Cold Blood not a complete piece of garbage like it is on live, and prevents us from having to vanish midfight to get Overkill back.

Originally Posted by Lightfist

The truth of the matter is, you have no proof for this and are just generating facts.

I like Cold Blood. I would prefer they buff it rather than remove it. That being said, assassination should have enough going on without it.

The changes in this patch and the last one go a good way toward addressing the issues we are seeing in the beta. This is an increase in builders for all specs but sub, and in finishers for all specs. Will we do appropriate damage at 90? Of course. Will it be with just these changes? I have no idea. Pretty clearly, threads have discussed things like "rogues do too much white damage" and everyone was taking for granted "rogues do not much damage". By putting the yellow hits in a better place, Blizzard addresses these concerns. A 45% buff is far from trivial.

What it doesn't do is change the relative power of rupture versus the other moves. That being said, with the 5 point duration remaining the beta value of 24, I suspect that our overall multiplier for the move is like 74% of AP, and thus worth using in all specs (which I am very much in favor of). The 1 point value remaining 8 might change the value of the 1 point rupture. Right now as mutilate you'll recast rupture instantly as it drops, going to 5 if you can but taking a 1 point if that's what happens. I don't think that would be very negative on the spec, and this is smoother than the glyph buffing the base rupture anyway.

Basically, everything I've seen with this patch is good stuff. Since Blizzard seems to really want to try out the rupture/garrote 20% thing, garrote losing positional will really help this on swap in pvp.

I do agree that this newest patch is good, but it's all numbers tweaks. Blizzard knows (mostly) what they're doing in that regard, I'm relatively confident that assassination and combat will pull competitive DPS at 90.

My worry is that the feel of assassination's rotation will feel extremely clunky the way it currently is on beta.

Originally Posted by Lightfist

The truth of the matter is, you have no proof for this and are just generating facts.

I would assume all three would be competitive at 90, or Blizzard is falling over somewhere. The design of the mop "trees" means that there's not really any excuse for less damage out of any tree.

It *IS* all numbers, but a huge amount of rogue feedback recently has been numbers- not just enough damage (which most beta testers know not to care about), but the yellow/while balance, as well as anemic specials in general. So these changes should address those and move rogues to focus on something else!

I also don't see why blindside should be free really, nor why adding a proc to a smooth spec makes it clunky. Blindside is more damage, and the bigger difference is that I think we are supposed to weave the proc into our rotation and gain better damage / energy out of the extra Dispatch, not just hammer the button when the thingy lights up or as soon as the higher PR moves have been exhausted, as we aren't a priority based spec (any of our specs really).

Really dunno .
More energy starving for Assa spec.
Subtely loosing Energetic Recovery aswell -Minus energy.
Combat mastery if im not wrong is doing half the dmg than now < So mastery is gonna be again an amazing low stats and again because of this more Energy starving since procs from Main gauche that have the chance of generating extra energy...( Combat potency )
The dmg is buffed but looking at every possible class, they all get buffet while leaving rogues starving for energy,Really dont know how this will work in pve( raid environments ) since No energy we're gonna be ...ed at the start of expansion especially 1st tier.

Either the skills are gonna hit hard either we're gonna see rogues again complaining at the start of each expansion about how broken is the Rogue class.Something that i dont wanna see.

Really dont like the changed and especially since talents don't upgrade anything within the Pve domain.
Hope that the Legendary wasn't like a last gift for our class and simply we're gonna be off the game.

Incorrect. When Blizzard removed the ability to get garrote and overkill, they also upped the procrate on venomous wounds.

Subtely loosing Energetic Recovery aswell -Minus energy.

Sub's energy recovery is being put on slice and dice. This honestly makes the move feel kind of dumb, because it does so much- currently we have a haste buff and an energy buff that also heals, and in beta we have a generic good stuff buff. However, the energy hasn't shrunk.

Combat mastery if im not wrong is doing half the dmg than now < So mastery is gonna be again an amazing low stats and again because of this more Energy starving since procs from Main gauche that have the chance of generating extra energy...( Combat potency )

Sorry, I'm not familiar with a massive main gauche nerf?

Rogues rely almost entirely on our talent trees to do damage, and a lot of that hasn't been put into the moves. Some of these actually change the flavor of the moves and weights of stats, such as the +crit talents, and their removal could be viewed as a large buff in certain burst situations.

Incorrect. When Blizzard removed the ability to get garrote and overkill, they also upped the procrate on venomous wounds.

Venomous wounds going from 60% proc to 75% in way makes up for the loss of overkill and stacking garrote and rupture all stacking together. The burst energy of the spec is gone making a slow spec feel slow all the time making the spec slower than live overall.

vm should have been 100% a loong time ago, cold clood could have been updated to increase crit dmg by xx% like a dps cd, or we could copy ferals tiers fury but an updated one, how ironic that would be, we getting a updated skill of another class

and dispatch should be free when it procs, but blizz prob think thats too much a change for us anyway, i wont get my hopes up yet.

I like the idea of making a new ability that combines Cold Blood and Overkill.
But I think it'd need to be a bit longer than 2 minutes, or make it not be able to be activated while Vendetta is active (ala Deadly Calm and Recklessness/Inner Rage for Arms warriors).

Back on topic though, I'd bet that Blizzard will fix Dispatch proccing (smoothness of Dispatch procs w/ rotation) once level 90 raids are unlocked and available for testing.

I like the idea of making a new ability that combines Cold Blood and Overkill.
But I think it'd need to be a bit longer than 2 minutes, or make it not be able to be activated while Vendetta is active (ala Deadly Calm and Recklessness/Inner Rage for Arms warriors).

Why would it need nerfs like that when all of those working together all this time has been fine?